The Child Migrants Trust was established by Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom. It addresses the issues surrounding the deportation of children from the United Kingdom. In the post World War Two period, children as young as three were sent by ship to Canada, New Zealand, the former Rhodesia and Australia. This practice continued until 1970. The Child Migrants Trust provides a specialised service, reuniting Britain's former Child Migrants with their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters and other relatives. Its United Kingdom base is in Nottingham, with offices in Australia in Perth and Melbourne.
Margaret Humphreys founded the Child Migrants Trust in 1987 in Nottinghamshire, UK, where she was a social worker. Through her social work and advocacy, and with her book Empty Cradles, published in 1994, Humphreys was instrumental in raising awareness about child migration from the United Kingdom and the plight of families affected by these policies. The Child Migrants Trust grew to provide a range of social work services to former child migrants and their family members, including counselling, support with family reunions and offering information, advice and family research. Margaret Humphreys received the Medal of the Order of Australia in March 1993, for her services on behalf of the child migrants.
Sources used to compile this entry: Humphreys, Margaret, Oranges and sunshine, Corgi, London, 2010, 383 pp.
Prepared by: Rosemary Francis
Created: 19 July 2011, Last modified: 31 October 2014
Last updated: 7 August 2023
Cite this: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/qld/biogs/QE00186b.htm
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License